This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. By facilitating the building of our personnel and infrastructure bases, COBRE support over the past five years has had a significant impact on research in microbial pathogenesis at the University of Idaho. In addition to two new COBRE-funded investigators added during the initial funding period, our university administration has partnered with the COBRE PI to create four additional tenure-track positions during the past four years. With this new group of talented faculty and the success of our COBRE faculty we have made progress toward establishing the UI as an institution with a nationally recognized biomedical program with a focus on microbial pathogenesis. To build upon this success, we propose four specific aims. Specific Aim 1: Extend the critical mass and expand the scientific diversity of the core group of COBRE co-Investigators. In this aim we propose to add to our existing COBRE team by providing research support for the recently hired faculty members, as well as more established faculty members not currently funded by NIH, and an additional person to be identified. Specific Aim 2: Expand and support COBRE funded core facilities. With COBRE and UI support, we were able to leverage private funding to build several state-of-the-art core facilities, including Structural Biology, Microscopy, Cell Separation, and Genomics Core Facilities. In this proposal, we describe plans to expand and/or support these facilities to ensure that initial investments made by COBRE and the UI efficiently enhance research of COBRE investigators and other biomedical investigators on campus. Specific Aim 3: Enhance the quality and numbers of graduate/medical students to participate in biomedical research. With the documented increase in higher quality graduate students we have been able to recruit since the beginning of the COBRE funding cycle, we will use additional COBRE funds to further enhance our graduate recruiting efforts. This will be done by enhancing stipends, promoting recruitment in the U.S. and internationally, plus interfacing with the Idaho INBRE's "Pipeline to Graduate Education" program. Specific Aim 4: Transition toward self-sustaining biomedical research support from the National Institutes of Health following completion of COBRE funds. This final aim will help to establish the COBRE investigators as independent researchers with the ultimate goal of obtaining long-term program project support from the NIH.